What promotes female empowerment and gender equality? We investigate how internal population mobility and social interaction foster the advancement of female empowerment and gender equality across diverse subpopulations. Using the urban-to-rural youth resettlement program in China during the 1970s — the Send-down Movement — as our empirical context, we find that rural females with greater exposure to urban youths have achieved higher levels of education, increased labor force participation, greater financial independence, enhanced autonomy in marital and fertility decisions, increased political engagement, heightened self-confidence, reduced risk aversion, and a stronger belief in gender-equal ideologies and social values. Our findings underscore the role of population mobility in disseminating gender-equal ideologies and practices, both through human capital formation and social interactions, leading to lasting impacts on female empowerment in traditional societies.

This study assesses the health benefits of better air quality by examining the causal impact of China’s stringent “2+26” regional air pollution control policy on local air quality and population health. Employing a spatial regression discontinuity design that capitalizes on the policy’s location-specific features, we present compelling evidence that the 2+26 policy results in an average reduction of 12.2 units in the local Air Quality Index (AQI) and a 47.0% decrease in per capita medical expenditure from 2014 to 2018. A one-unit reduction in AQI corresponds to a 0.88% reduction in per capita annual medical spending, equivalent to RMB 30.2 (US$4.6). These health gains stem from reduced chronic disease prevalence and improved subjective well-being. Nationally, air quality improvement during 2014–2018 could save RMB 674billion (US$104billion) annually in national direct medical costs, constituting 11.6% of national medical expenditure in 2018. Our findings underscore the substantial health and welfare gains achievable through pollution controls in developing countries.

As industrial automation supplants labor, there are important consequences on the labor market, especially for the vast rural population in developing countries. This study investigates how industrial automation, particularly the use of robots, affects the employment and mobility of young rural workers and the decision-making of their elderly parents in China. Using longitudinal data from rural Chinese households and a shift-share approach, we find automation in urban areas decelerates the rural-to-urban migration. This slowdown is accompanied by a reduction in rural workers' employment opportunities and an increase in their propensity to co-reside with their elderly parents in their home counties, which in turn alters their parents' financial decisions, including labor supply, savings, and family transfers. Notably, rural workers' decision to stay and co-reside with their senior parents fosters more frequent family interactions, contributing to notable improvements in the elders' mental and physical health. Our study underscores the complex effects of automation on labor mobility, family relationships, and the overall well-being of the rural populace in the face of technological advancements.

Rural households contend with numerous uninsured risks that hinder their ability to leverage profitable yet risky opportunities. We study whether the provision of insurance coverage for medical expenditure, one of the most substantial and unpredictable risk, can stimulate entrepreneurship and other risky financial decisions among rural households. We leverage the progressive nationwide rollout of a universal public health insurance program in rural China. We find that the introduction of health insurance led to a substantial increase in rural households engagement in entrepreneurship. This increase is mainly driven by the risk sharing of health insurance, rather than a reduction in realized medical expenses. The entrepreneurship-promoting effect is also evident at an aggregate level, fostering the growth of smallholder businesses in rural counties. Our findings shed light on the understudied, favorable impact of health insurance on household’s risk taking in rural markets of developing countries.

The association between pandemic experience and immediate mental health risks, such as depression, is well-documented, yet the long-term effects remain unclear. This study examines the impact of early childhood exposure to the 2003 SARS pandemic on adulthood mental health after 17 years in China, using data from the 2020 China Family Panel Studies (CFPS). The analysis included 6289 participants, aged 3 to 30 years during the SARS outbreak, with an average age of 35.3 years at the time of survey. Adulthood mental health was assessed using Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CESD) and an indicator of clinical depression. The severity of local SARS outbreaks was assessed by cumulative cases per 10,000 population. Results show that each additional case per 10,000 population was linked to a 1.617-fold (95% confidence interval (CI): 1.425–1.836) increase in odds of depression after 17 years for younger children (aged 3–12 years in 2003) relative to older cohorts (aged 13-30). This risk was higher in children from rural areas (adjusted odds ratio (aOR) 3.64; 95% CI 2.92–4.55), with poor physical health (1.98; 1.59–2.48), and from low-income families (2.87; 2.03–4.05). The childhood pandemic experience elevated the probability of developing depression-prone personality traits, which contributes to the enduring impact of childhood pandemic experiences on adulthood mental health. These findings highlight the long-lasting psychological impact of early-childhood pandemic exposure, underscoring the need for targeted interventions to mitigate its effects on the younger generation and emphasizing the importance of monitoring long-term mental health and personality development in children post-pandemics, particularly in light of COVID-19.

This article investigates how environmental adversity affects competitive performance in cognitive-intensive settings. Using a comprehensive dataset of professional eSports tournaments and match-hour variation of fine particulate matters, we find robust evidence that pollution kills competition. Specifically, higher air pollution levels diminish the performance and winning odds of the weaker team in a matchup while boosting that of the stronger team, widening the gap between them. We document two operating channels: (i) pollution leads to heterogeneous performance-reducing effects contingent on a team’s relative strength against their opponent, rather than its absolute competitiveness; and (ii) a weaker team adjusts their strategic decision-making differently in a polluted environment compared to their stronger counterparts. Our findings elucidate the distributional impact of environmental adversity and underscore its influence on strategic decision-making.

This paper assesses the spatial effects of environmental regulations on economic activities. By exploiting the progressive rollout of a national pollution control program in China, which constructed a monitoring network that covered the urban center of every city, we find that polluting firms located in the unmonitored upwind region of the city experienced a substantially larger reduction in output than non-upwind firms after the program. Because the wind can transport upwind pollution emissions to the monitoring network-covered urban center, local governments are incentivized to enforce tighter regulations on upwind firms. Although industrial activities were suppressed, commercial businesses and residential services were promoted in the upwind region, accompanied by a greater supply of corresponding land and increased land prices. Altogether, the monitoring program led to a substantial reduction in population exposure to air pollution and an redistribution of industrial and residential activities within the city. Our findings shed light on the policy-making of future environmental regulation programs.

This paper assesses mental health responses to information on environmental risks. We exploit the progressive implementation of a national program in China that introduces more comprehensive air pollution monitoring and provides real-time air-pollution information to the public. The program leads to a sharp increase in public awareness and attention to air pollution issues and results in a large increase in the sensitivity of individual’s mental health to changes in air quality, especially among those with more exposure to pollution information and those more susceptible to mental illnesses. Information of worsening air quality has a direct effect on mental health as a source of stressors and an indirect behavioral effect through reducing outdoor activities and social integration. Our findings shed light on the design and delivery of environmental information disclosure programs, especially for countries with pressing environmental threats.

China is experiencing a surge in medical malpractice lawsuits. Using administrative hospital panel data, this paper investigates both short- and long-run impacts of medical malpractice lawsuits on patient medical spending and hospital operations. We find that after the occurrence of an additional malpractice lawsuit in a hospital, total medical spending per patient visit increases by 2.8% in the current year and by as much as 8.8% in the long run. This increase is mainly driven by spending on prescription drugs and diagnostic tests. In response, hospitals invest more in medical devices and procure more drugs. We find little evidence of changes in patient outcomes. Our findings show that the surge of medical malpractice lawsuits leads to defensive medicine and fuels the secular growth of medical spending in China.

Unexpected health shocks may bring catastrophic consequences for households. This paper examines the effect of unexpected adverse health shocks on household members' physical and mental health, labor supply, household income and asset, and health behaviors in China by analyzing two nationally representative datasets and adopting a difference-in-differences method augmented with coarsened exact matching. We find that an unexpected health shock results in a discounted out-of-pocket medical expenditure of 16,943 RMB (US$ 2647) over five years for an average household, a reduction of household income per capita of 841 RMB per year (US$ 131, or 6.0% of household annual income per capita), and a loss of net household asset per capita of 13,635 RMB (US$ 2130, or 9.7% of household asset per capita). It raises the probability of an average household applying for public poverty relief allowance by 2.8 percentage points. In addition, we document a strong intra-household spillover effect of health shocks on mental health and health behaviors. A simple back-of-envelope calculation shows that the health shock induces a private cost of 34,966 RMB (US$ 5463) over 5 years for an average household, and incurs a social financial burden of 6066 RMB (US$ 948) in 5 years per household in medical reimbursement and social welfare transfers. At a national scale, the total social burden of health shocks from cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases amounts to 1.1 trillion RMB (US$ 172.1 billion) over 5 years.

We study the effects of sons versus daughters on parental joint time allocation between the labor market and the household. Using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey from 1989 to 2006, we apply a fixed-effects model to control for cross-household heterogeneity in son preference. We find that the birth of sons rather than daughters significantly reduces maternal time spent on household chores, which we argue represents an increase in maternal intra-household bargaining power. However, the effects of sex composition of children on paternal time allocation and maternal time on labor-market activities are weak or mixed. Results are robust to a series of sensitive analyses.

Using a newly constructed panel dataset that covers the 14-year period from 1997 to 2011 for more than 100 villages in China, this study analyzes the dynamic effect of rural-to-urban migration on inequality in source villages. Given that income inequality is time persisting, we use a system GMM framework. We found that the dynamic relationship between migration and income inequality is inversely U-shaped. Specifically, contemporary migration increases income inequality, whereas lagged migration has a strong income inequality-reducing effect on the sending villages. A 50 percent increase in the lagged migration rate translates into a one-ninth to one-tenth standard deviation reduction in income inequality.